


Say no to the Trans-Misty Mountains Highway project!

by BlueFloyd



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Middle Earth, Modern Era, Modern Middle Earth, Moria | Khazad-dûm, Well it has been rebuilt larger and in a brutalist style, Yeah I know that Durin's bridge was destroyed, gentrification, highways, in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25111516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueFloyd/pseuds/BlueFloyd
Summary: Petitioning against the construction of a highway branch between the North-South Highway and the Lórien.
Kudos: 6





	Say no to the Trans-Misty Mountains Highway project!

The Ministry of Transports of Arnor announced last week that they will launch a tendering procedure for the construction of a new branch of the North-South Highway. According to the Ministry, this new branch will "contribute to the opening up of Lórien and the economic development of the Misty Mountains, Caras Galadhon and Khazad-Dûm".

This project will actually be a DISASTER for the Misty Mountains. The Misty Mountains passes are very high and blocked by snow for a good part of the year. The only way to build a trans-mountains highway is through Khazad-Dum itself. What the Ministry plans to do is to have a highway go directly through a populated city, in a cavernous environment where pollution will stay trapped. Furthermore, Khazad-Dûm is being assesed to become a Middle-Earth Heritage Site by the URESCO, for both its natural and cultural features. The Ministry knows this and want to hurry to get this highway built before the URESCO certifiates Khazad-Dum, even it if means destroying most of these features.

The Ministry says that the highway layout will circle around Khazad-Dum and make use of secondary tunnels, but that is a plain out lie : anyone knowing Khazad-Dum knows that there are very few passages across the Great Chasm ; building new tunnels and new bridges would be prohibitively expensive and so it is certain that the highway will double Durin's Bridge, in the very heart of the city.

As for the economic development of the city and the Misty Mountains, this highway will achieve nothing towards this goal. As of now, during summer, the traffic accross the mountains is evenly distributed between Khazad-Dûm and the mountain roads. It brings some income to the mountain villages that act as stops on the roads. During the winter, the traffic crossing the mountains goes almost exclusively through Khazad-Dûm, the only people going up the mountains are going to the skiing resorts. If the highway is built, the summer traffic in the mountains will almost completely disappears, forcing the villages to rely exclusively on the development of skiing resorts to survive, when we know that global warming is already threatening this model of economic development for mountains. Moreover, 200 miles of highway, with bridges and tunnels planned along the way and the massive use of concrete they imply will certainly do no good to global warning and to other environmental issues…

Khazad-Dûm and Caras Galadhon are as of now the economic centers of the region, and the interaction between the two cities and with the rural area around them is well balanced, the region enjoying a relative prosperity despite the overall economic crisis, due mainly to *not* being too inserted in the globalization of exchanges in the Middle-Earth.

So why the need for this highway?

Gentrification.

Even if it is not a direct path, the highway will bring Khazad-Dûm and the Lórien much closer to the engineers of Isengard's Mithril Valley and the upper managers of Bree. For them, it means easier access to skiing resorts and to secondary homes in the Lórien. And it means huge housing speculation opportunities in Khazad-Dûm itself. First, the construction of the highway will mean expropriations and the associated speculation. But once the highway is up and running, Khazad-Dûm in itself will be very interesting for gentrifiers. It's an old industrial city with a lot of history and specific architecture. It will be of huge interest to the real estate speculators. This means an explosion of rents and housing prices in the city, forcing the poorest citizens to leave the city and having to commut from Glanduir or even further.

Basically, it's the same old story. The Moria was inhabited by orcs, and then the dwarves came, pushed us out through war, broken treaties and false promises. They exploited the mountain for all they could until they exhausted the Mithril veins and woke up the Balrog. Now that the place was useless to them, they left and we came back and tried to make a living here. When the Balrog was killed, they tried to come back and stole our city once again. And now they see a new opportunity to do it. The tools changed. It's not war anymore, it's gentrification and economic development. It's not the dwarves kingdoms but the Ministry of Transport. But the goal stays the same. Pushing us out and exploiting the place as much as possible.

Well not this time. We stood our ground before and we'll stood it again.

ON THE FOURTH OF SÚLìMË, JOIN THE PROTEST MARCH FROM THE GREAT GATES TO DURIN'S BRIDGE.  
SAY NO TO THE TRANSMOUNTAINS HIGHWAY!


End file.
